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Universities, medical schools and National Health Service trusts should work more closely together, a Nuffield Trust report says.

John Wyn Owen, secretary of the Nuffield Trust, said that moves in the early 1990s to make the NHS more competitive may have led to the fragmentation of links between the NHS and universities, although there were examples of good practice in both planning and coordinating.

Another report, Good Practice in NHS/Academic Links, by the Joint Medical Advisory Committee of the UK higher education funding bodies, out this week, says that joint planning and problem solving is the key to a successful universities-NHS relationship and medical and dental education and research.